Without limiting the scope of the invention, its background is described in connection with cotton fibers.
There is a longstanding problem of an inverse relationship between cotton fiber qualities versus high yields. To date, there is no evidence that the longstanding inverse relationship observed between fiber quality and yield can be broken, especially under drought stress, a pressing and growing problem in the face of climate change.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,541,665, issued to Jiang, et al., is entitled “Polynucleotides and polypeptides in plants.” According to the inventors, the invention relates to plant transcription factor polypeptides, polynucleotides that encode them, homologs from a variety of plant species, and methods of using the polynucleotides and polypeptides to produce transgenic plants having advantageous properties compared to a reference plant. Sequence information related to these polynucleotides and polypeptides is said to be useful for bioinformatic search methods.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,492,618, issued to Bourland is entitled “Cotton cultivar UA-48.” According to the inventor, the invention relates to the seeds of cotton cultivar UA-48, to the plants of cotton UA-48 and to methods for producing a cotton plant produced by crossing the cultivar UA-48 with itself or another cotton variety. The invention is also said to relate to hybrid cotton seeds and plants produced by crossing the cultivar UA-48 with another cotton cultivar.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,283,519, issued to Creelman, et al., is entitled “Plant transcriptional regulators of abiotic stress.” According to the inventor, the invention relates to plant transcription factor polypeptides, polynucleotides that encode them, homologs from a variety of plant species, variants of naturally-occurring sequences, and methods of using the polynucleotides and polypeptides to produce transgenic plants having advantageous properties, including improved cold and other osmotic stress tolerance, as compared to wild-type or reference plants. The invention is also said to pertain to expression systems that may be used to regulate these transcription factor polynucleotides, providing constitutive, transient, inducible and tissue-specific regulation.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,446,241, issued to Rock, et al., is entitled “Transcription factors, DNA and methods for introduction of value-added seed traits and stress tolerance.” This patent teaches that abscisic acid-(ABA) inducible gene expression in different plant tissues is enhanced synergistically by the co-expression of a B3-domain transcription factor and various bZIP-domain transcription factors, or a different B3-domain transcription factor. Using these transcription factors in novel formulations in plants confers value-added traits to transgenic plants, including, but not limited to, higher levels of heterologous gene expression, drought and salt tolerance, viability and productivity under stress, enhanced nutrient reserves and seed properties.
United States Patent Application No. 20110277190, filed by Abad is entitled “Transgenic Plants With Enhanced Agronomic Traits.” This applicant states that the application relates to transgenic plant cells with recombinant DNA for expression of proteins that are useful for imparting enhanced agronomic trait(s) to transgenic crop plants. The invention is also said to provide transgenic plants and progeny seed comprising the transgenic plant cells where the plants are selected for having an enhanced trait selected from the group of traits consisting of enhanced water use efficiency, enhanced cold tolerance, increased yield, enhanced nitrogen use efficiency, enhanced seed protein and enhanced seed oil. It is also said to disclose methods for manufacturing transgenic seed and plants with enhanced traits.